Fire and Ice
by Unique .F
Summary: They told her that it was quick, easy. If anything, he must have been bored. How could they tell the truth to their errant, flighty mistress, with her eyes of fire, as their wintry master lay in icebound agony, his tears frozen to his pallid cheeks? Ice could never defeat fire. Fire would always melt ice, but ice would turn into water, and put the fire out. ONESHOT


Fire and Ice

_**T**__**hey say it had begun**_, the cold, eighteen days after she had left. They say he didn't hurt, that he simply lay down and couldn't get back up again. That if anything, he must have been bored while he waited to die.

Of course he wasn't. But they couldn't tell her that, couldn't tell her that he had been locked in agony, slowly freezing to a bitter, merciless death. They didn't tell her that the ice began first creeping across his skin, stiffening in his hair, only three days after she had gone. Gone, gone, with her damning words.

Because even after everything, they were loyal to their errant, flighty mistress, even as their emotionless, wintry master cried tears of ice and lay with pallor in his cold cheeks and pleas in his chilly eyes.

But then it got worse, and worse, and worse. They knew he was dying, dying in icy torture. So they ran to her. They begged, they pleaded, but fire in her eyes, she denied their claims and turned away.

They tried everything to catch her attention. They cried out, they tricked, they attacked, they sobbed. But she ignored them all, turning a blind eye, her hot heat flashing out and burning them if they tarried.

Wounded and weeping, they crept back to their bleak, cold master, yearning for the blazing sunfire of their mistress, to melt the frozen cockles of their master's heart. He was unresponsive and as cold as death itself. They ran back, trying again, she must listen!

She said it was all a trick. A ploy, a deception. They cried, they promised, they invoked every oath and vow their desperate minds could think of. But she turned cruelly away, steel walls to their pleas of surrender. Lava splashed from her fingertips and her words dripped with burning oil as she condemned them, over and over again, the white-hot creature of their capricious mistress, fickle as flickering flames, fatal as forceful fire.

Burned, their wounds oozing infectious liquids, they retreated once more, throwing themselves on their master as if the heat in their bodies could restore him to the living corpse he had been since their mistress, the supernova of heat in their lives, had gone, and left their world in dreary shadow.

Their icy master inched ever closer to death's sweet, unforgiving, unrelenting embrace, without the searing clasp of his tempestuous lover to boil his wintry blood.

They wept, silently, helpless in his final hours.

He stared up, blank, unseeing eyes covered in a thin sheen of hoarfrost. Ice curled in his lashes. His skin was paler than snow, and his hair hung with shimmering icicles. His deathly pale hands clutched his fabled sword, Ice, covered in snow crystals.

But his mouth was open, though no breath of his steamed the air. And with his very last breath, he screamed her name, thousands of year's worth of painful memories in that single, poignant cry.

She came to the funeral. Maybe she believed they wouldn't trick her at something so drastic. Maybe she regretted her hotheaded behaviour.

Maybe it was far too late.

She cried when she saw him, laid out cold on a marble bier, and rushed to his side. Too late did her warm, life-giving caresses touch his snowy skin, too late did her burning tears fall on his icy cheeks.

And the memories came rushing back to her, as she stood there in grief, the first wisps of steam curling up from her skin. The memories of before, before, back when she loved him, and shared her fire with his ice.

Back when she would recoil with frostbitten flesh from his touch as winter descended, how blisters would form painfully on his chilled skin when she reached out for him as the scales tipped. Her yearning to be free, away, to give the desirous fire inside of her a chance to guide her in her own life, rather than locked in servitude to her winter king.

And how, ice tears frozen on his cheeks, he had watched as she had run away, seeing the cruel fire in her eyes and knowing not to interfere.

Tears ran down her cheeks, tears of lava, as she remembered how she had screamed to him in their last moments that she never wanted to remember, never, unless she could see his face cold with death's pallor before her. And of how, pleas in his eyes, he had done as she had wished, always as she had wished, and sent her away.

Even in death, he obeyed her last wish. Anything, he had whispered so often, anything, even his own life, if she wished it.

Oh, be careful what you wish for, for it came true. It always came true, and in those illbegotten moments, she had cast away the thing dearest to her.

But he had come back for her, come back with the offer of a second chance. Then a third, a fourth, a fifth, a sixth. Infinitely forgiving, he had pursued her, never letting go, never giving up.

Flighty, she had run, but refused to sever her ties with him. Because if she did, they would both die.

But she had asked to forget.

And she had asked for the babe to be taken.

And she had cut their tie with her damning words.

He had no power over her, but she had power over him. He froze without her fire, but his ice kept her fire from burning.

Flames danced along her tanned, hot flesh. She screamed, fell to the floor. Writhing flames overtook her, and like a phoenix she had erupted, and gone, left in a pile of ash.

Ice could never defeat fire. Fire would always melt ice, but ice would turn into water, and put the fire out.

**An indulgence of mine. I was bored, and this popped into my head. Hardly original, I know, but I wanted to put it out there. Summer Queen and Winter King. Hotheaded Sarah and chilly Jareth. And without each other to balance each other out, they would be overwhelmed by their separate elements. **

**Think about it this way. If Sarah wasn't so rash and fiery, Jareth would probably murder himself with boredom, or turn into a Vulcan. (Vulcans are a race of people who believe they have no emotions off **_**Star Trek, **_**if you were wondering) But if Jareth wasn't such a cold, cruel, calculating person, then Sarah would probably just go and jump into a volcano for laughs or something. Or insult some guy aiming a gun at her head and get shot.**

**I can see that happening. "Hey Jareth, let's go swimming in lava!" "No Sarah, lava **_**burns **_**you. You'd die." "Oh yeah! I forgot that!"**


End file.
